


900 Errors

by HyperKey (Sylverstia)



Series: Chronological Order [28]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Body Horror, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Permanent Injury, Whump, a bit of fluff probably
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-27
Updated: 2019-02-13
Packaged: 2019-08-08 10:28:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 11,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16427612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sylverstia/pseuds/HyperKey
Summary: Follow up to the last oneshot.Fighting with system malfunctions and emotions at the same time isn't a pleasant experience.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> boo. I was planning to upload a different oneshot but i can't access my computer at the moment, so i wrote this to compensate.  
> i haven't forgotten retro, but that is also on my computer.
> 
> hope you like it! Leave comments if you wanna share what you're thinking abut it, i am always curious about that.

Fingertips flittered over sharp edges, searching, reassuring. A soft murmur of a voice. Male, familiar. Hands on a cheek, slow, calming.

Sound came back with a crash and a shriek that made him want to scream. His mouth did open, but no sound escaped. It was burning hot around him, invisible flames licking at his frame. He flinched, tried to move away from the sensation.

His body didn’t react.

Fear gripped him then. Ugly claws sinking into his chest, threatening to tear him apart from the inside.

He couldn’t breathe.

What was happening? Why? For what reason?

Had they been attacked? But they were home. Emma was asleep, Gavin was asleep.

He was jolted when something was ripped away from him, something hot, something unpleasant, and cool air moved over his body, calming him and his raging thirium pump.

Gavin threw the blanket aside, ripped open all windows in the living room, knocked over the cat tree in the process, but didn’t give a damn when he darted back to his partner.

He fell to his knees, rested one hand on his cheek. “Cory?” it was a soft voice; one Gavin would deny having.

Cory couldn’t speak. He focused solely on the task of cooling his overheating body down, taking deep breaths now that he could again. He wasn’t sure why he had been unable to just seconds before.

“Fuck you.” Gavin hissed. “You scared the hell out of me!”

As he tried to reply, his breath hitched, then stopped altogether. Cory’s hands clenched into fists, strangled the couch cushion below him. He couldn’t even tell Gavin what was going on, being unaware of that himself. All he knew was that something was seriously wrong.

“Shit, shit shit…” Gavin hissed, jumped back to his feet and ran out the room.

Cory could hear his socked feet thundering through the hallway and into the kitchen. Then the sound was gone, replaced with a horrible ringing in his ears. Where did Gavin go? Why did he leave? His body arched at the effort to force air into his respiration system. He needed this to function!

Why wasn’t it working?

He didn’t know Gavin had returned until something icy was forced under his neck. Cool hands moved over his chest, rested over his thirium pump for a second, before the moved on. It had been two days since the last major setback, since he had been confined t the couch again and was connected to another external machine to keep his thirium pump functioning.

He wasn’t supposed to move much, and it angered and bored him, but not he would prefer all of this over whatever was happening to him now.

Gavin didn’t know what to do either. That thought frightened Cory even more.

He hadn’t realized Gavin was talking to him until the horrible ringing in his ears subsided.

He heard the voice of his partner, calm and collected, but shaking nonetheless. And he could breathe. Even if it was only for a few moments, he made sure to get as much air into his system as possible.

Gavin watched his partner like a hawk. It was 5 in the morning, getting an of the technicians they trusted at this time was nearly impossible. Cindy needed an hour and thirty minutes to be here, Elijah turned his phone off at night, due to the recent events. It was an asshole move, but somehow Gavin understood it. If he really had to contact his brother he could still call Chloe, yet somehow that seemed wrong in that moment.

That left emergency services. They were good with common models. But Cory was not a common model and the current issue was not standard procedure.

Cory was deathly pale due to the overlay flickering on and off, tears he probably hadn’t even noticed staining his cheeks as he gasped for air and shook his whole body in the process with each desperate breath.

The detective had one hand rested on his chest, concentrated on the thundering of the thirium pump below his fingers. It was unsteady, stumbling. But it was still working and that was all he was asking for in that moment.

“I’m calling the station, see If they have a tech on dispatch.” Gavin muttered, didn’t wait for a reply when he dialed the dispatch number. He needed specific people here, there was no point in calling the force the usual way.

He kept his eyes glued to his partner as he relayed the info to his colleagues. Nightshift would send a technician. Gavin wasn’t sure if he was supposed to feel relieved but didn’t get to think more about it when Cory fell into an episode like before again.

The detective cursed has his partner arched his back off the couch, frightened gasps of shallow breath escaping him. He had no clue how to help him. Androids didn’t breathe oxygen. They breathed all the stuff humans breathed out, filtered it and converted it back into oxygen.

It was inspired by how plants worked, if Gavin remembered that right. But that wasn’t the issue here, was it?

Cursing loudly, he leaned forward. He was out of options. There was nothing he could do for his partner, o all he could think of was irrational and stupid. But sometimes the dumbest ideas worked.

And so, he gripped Cory’s head, pinched his nose close as he tipped his head back and breathed into the android. Cory flailed helplessly for a second, then he finally settled down again. Breath still coming too shallow and too fast, but it wasn’t completely irregular anymore.

Gavin wasn’t sure if it was him that had helped or if it was just a coincidence, but that hardly mattered to him at that moment when he moved in and tried one more time.

And sure enough Cory calmed down.

“The fuck is happening to you?” Gavin asked, but as he had expected, the android didn’t respond.

Chances were that Cory had no idea either.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After so many chapters of weird things happening, they finally figure out what's wrong.  
> But was it in time?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HUZZAH! Back at it.  
> i am hyped for this thing. lol.
> 
> Hope you like it!  
> Reviews are loved and appreciated!

Gavin frowned deeply when He walked back into the precinct after an investigation and saw Connor standing in the middle of bullpen. Hank and Ben were fussing about him but the android gave no reaction to anything they said. Gavin also noticed that his eyes were glazed over, blue-ish, frozen in place.

_Like those of a dead android._

His stomach plummeted at the thought.

“What happened?” he heard himself asking before he was even close enough to see the warnings displayed on the jacket of the android.

Newest high-tech bullshit, service-androids directly linked to their uniforms. It was helpful in some way, but it also made them much easier of a target to anti android groups.

“He was hit with a baseball bat. Just around the corner.” Chris explained as he walked up to them, shaking his head in disbelief.

“Attacking an officer in front of the Department…” Gavin scoffed. What an idiot.

“His scanners are down.” Hank hissed when Connor flinched away from Hanks hand on his shoulder.

The younger detective snarled at the android. That basically mean that Connor was blind. It had happened to Cory a few months back, but that had sorted itself out. Judging by the thirium dripping down the side of Connor’s head, that would not be the case here.

“Can he hear us?” Gavin asked without thinking.

“I can hear you perfectly fine, detective” Connor replied instead of Hank. “I am _only_ unable to see. Which includes both my optical units as well as all my scanners and radars.”

“So… you see absolutely nothing.”

“That is correct.”

Gavin scoffed. “Got the ass who did that?”

“Fowler’s chewing him out.” Ben sighed and handed Hank a bottle of thirium.

The lieutenant pulled a chair close and eased Connor down on it before he gave the bottle to the android and leaned against the row of counters next to him.

“So, where’s _your_ partner?”

Gavin turned around and frowned when Cory wasn’t anywhere in immediate sight. He shrugged and looked back at Hank. “Maybe needed to take a piss.” He joked, but something nagged at him.

Cory wouldn’t just disappear without a reason, or a note. Especially not now, after all the bullshit. They had just replaced his thirium pump two days ago. Things should have been fine now.

Frowning he left the bullpen and headed down the corridor to peak into the observation room. Sure enough Fowler was talking to the ass who hit Connor in the other room, but Cory was neither in that room, nor in the one he had looked into.

That least three other choices.

The basement with the evidence room and the android repair unit, and the bathroom.

Gavin chose the bathroom, as it was closest.

As he opened the door, he already knew Cory was in there. It was a gut feel. Why the android was here, though, that was a whole other question. One that was answered quickly when he heard the choking noises, he was all too familiar with now.

They still hadn’t figured out why this kept happening. His thirium supply was checked by an app on the android’s phone, as the internal numbers were still off. Gavin’s phone was connected to it as well, so he could react if the android wasn’t able to. Ryan had programmed it, specifically for him and Cory, but Gavin had no doubt that the idea would be useful for many others.

Cory was perched in a stall, leaned against the open door, legs uselessly on the floor, head bent backwards as if that would make it easier for him to breathe. Gavin had suspected it to be a psychological thing, because it started happening after the knife attack and continued on even after his thirium pump was replaced, but after taking the android to the psychologic counselor of the precinct, nothing was out of the ordinary.

He crouched down next to his partner, took his hand with both of his own as the android’s free hand fisted Gavin’s shirt like a lifeline.

“It’s okay.” Gavin muttered, seated himself next to Cory and pulled him into his shirt. “What caused it?”

Cory took a few choking breaths, and then managed to gasp, “I don’t know-”

“Okay. That’s okay.” Gavin sighed, rubbed his hand over Cory’s arm and steadied his shaking frame. “We’ll let Cindy look at you again, yeah?”

Cory shook his head. “She didn’t find anything the past four times… there won’t be anything now. Even your brother didn’t find anything.”

The detective hung his shoulder with a loud sigh. “You can’t keep going like this… it’s affecting your work-“

“If you don’t want to work with a defective machine anymore, that is understandable.”

“Fuck, no. That is not what I am trying to say-“

Cory leaned into his partner and nodded slowly. “This is becoming a major tax on my systems. As long as we don’t know the cause, it would be best not to put me on field cases. To prevent causing harm to the investigation or you.”

Gavin nodded, noted at Cory was much calmer now. “You sure this isn’t just panic attacks?”

“There isn’t enough data on the affliction in androids to rule it out… however, Crystal has found nothing, going by the human parameters of the condition.”

The detective shrugged. “There android counselors?”

Cory closed his eyes and lifted his shoulders in a shrug. “I don’t know.”

“Cindy might. Let’s go.”

Gavin untangled himself from his partner and pulled him to unsteady feet. “And stop hiding this shit from me, for fucks sake!”

The steel blue eyes avoided him as Gavin raised his voice and if it was possible Cory suddenly looked rather small and frail. It was physically impossible, androids didn’t shrink or lost weight, yet somehow the android looked so much more in need of help than usual. Cory always gave the impression of being able to handle everything. He was huge, bulky, his gaze was murderous. But now with his downcast eyes he pulled the kicked puppy look better than Connor. Gavin thought that was quite the achievement.

They had barely reached the end of the hallway when the android stumbled into the wall, unable to keep himself on his feet and slid down to his knees, thirium leaking from his nose. He fixed his wide eyes on Gavin, grabbed into the air before he found his partner’s shirt as the Detective kneeled down in front of him.

“Shit, what now?!” he hissed, fed up at being constantly worried about the android.

Tears suddenly filled the pale eyes, dripped over the cheek when the android fell forward, shaking violently. A choked sob ripped through the silence, muffled only by Gavin’s shirt.

Emotions were weird things to new deviants, but Cory had never acted this way, and the was his nose was bleeding didn’t seem normal to him.

“I need a tech here!” he almost screamed as he turned into the direction of the others. He faintly heard the conformation from someone that sounded suspiciously like Chris, but Gavin had no mind to dwell on that.

He kept Cory steady, despite his violent shaking and wished for a way to stop the torment on his partner. It was painful to watch, and it started to get on his nerves too.

When a familiar red-head crouched down in front of him, Gavin’s heart was racing. Cory had stopped breathing, but didn’t seem in distress because of that, and hat was when Gavin realized that the android had become completely unresponsive, save for the shaking.

“What happened?” Cindy asked as she carefully untangled Cory from Gavin and gently pulled him to the floor.

“I don’t know. He was being weird again with this choking bullshit… then he just… started bleeding.”

Cindy nodded, connected her laptop to Cory’s LED and snarled at the readings she got. “Everything’s stable…”

“The fuck?!”

She opened the android’s black shirt and started prodding around his body, checking for something. Gavin didn’t know what.

“The readings say he’s fine…” She muttered. “… I don’t get it.”

“I know!” Gavin growled. “Everything says he’s fine and yet he fucking isn’t! Do something for fucks sake!”

“Calm down.” She muttered calmly, connected a probe to the android’s chest and frowned when its data was displayed on her tablet. She then nodded firmly and turned towards the bullpen area. “Ryan, it’s a virus, make sure all androids get quarantined and checked and run a check on Connor!”

“Got it!”

Gavin blinked in confusion. “…How… the fuck did a virus-“

“Get past his systems?” Cindy finished for him, “I have no fucking clue, but _that_ isn’t the issue at the moment.”

She turned the android to his side and pulled the shirt off him. Carelessly she tossed it aside and placed her hand on the back panel. The skin peeled back and revealed the white plastic beneath. She held her hand in place until the white shifted into clear plastic and Gavin could see inside.

“So, what is the issue?” The detective asked to keep his mind occupied while he stared into the insides of his partner.

“His software doesn’t know that his body is experiencing major malfunctions. It’s not displayed anywhere, he had no way of knowing. I had no way of knowing without opening him up.” She continued.

Slowly she placed Cory face down onto the tiles, and snarled at her tablet. While her laptop still gave faulty readings, her tablet showed her the real numbers. And they were alarming.

“…Gavin, I don’t know if I can save him. The virus blocked access to the actual numbers for so long, that most of his biocomponents are failing. That’s why he had so many issues lately…”

Gavin forced his eyes shut and tried to block out the horrible thoughts that were coursing through his mind.

Had the knife back there really been meant for him, and not for Cory?

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who knows, maybe this ends well after all. I wonder.
> 
> Comments are always appreciated~

Gavin thought that plastic chairs of any sort of place were uncomfortable, but these took the cake. White walls, gray accents. No pictures, no magazines, no humans. He stuck out like a sore thumb in between the two other androids in the small waiting room. Both of them were seated opposite of him, watching him carefully.

Gavin didn’t want to be here. He wanted to go home, forget how much this place looked like a horrible abomination between a hospital and a car shop and sleep until things were fine again. But things wouldn’t just be fine again. He was sitting here because things weren’t fine.

He didn’t even remember how he had gotten here, or how long ago. Was it shock? It definitely wasn’t acceptance. He was in denial and his chest was a constant knot of dread ever since Cindy had given him the news.

_Cory could die tonight._

The thought made him crush the empty plastic cup in his hands, tears of frustration sprung into his eyes. Six hours he had been waiting for any news. Six hours of no updates. But how long he had been sitting in that exact same spot, he couldn’t remember. His left leg had fallen asleep at some point, but his mind had been too foggy to do something about it.

Heavy footsteps caught his attention. He knew who he would see before the man entered his field of vision.

Hank was carrying a paper bag filled with pastries, two cardboard cups from the coffeeshop down the road.

Gavin barely registered he had taken the cup until the heat seeped into his icy fingers. He was freezing, yet there was nothing he could do about that. Nothing he wanted to do about it. His hands were shaking.

How odd…

“Any news?” Hank asked silently, and Gavin now felt less like an intruder in some Android utopia. Hank looked just as out of place.

“Nothing.” He replied, flinched violently when Connor joined them.

Their faces looked so similar. Gavin knew all the differences, but he knew, that if Cory wouldn’t make it, he wouldn’t be able to look at Connor again.

“Sorry…” Connor grimaced, settled down next to Hank. At least he looked okay again.

Gavin clenched his grip around the cup, closed his eyes. Repair facility or not, these places were always bearer of bad news.

The hours trickles by like chewing gum, almost like torture. The two androids were called away, Hank went to find a restroom. And then Gavin was alone with Connor.

“Why are you even here?” Gavin asked, needed some distraction. And if that meant talking to the prick, he would take it. Anything to keep his thoughts from spiraling down the hole they were moving around.

“…for lack of a better word to describe the relation between us, Cory is something akin to a brother to me.”

The detective scoffed. “You two sure look like twins.”

“As the first 13 RK900s are refurbished RK800 models, that is a quite accurate assumption.”

 “What, he made from your parts?”

Connor nodded a few times. “Most of his parts are upgraded versions of mine. His system is only partially compatible with RK800 biocomponents, however.”

“So, your parts could save him in a pinch, but not for long?”

“Correct.”

Gavin snarled and leaned back into the uncomfortable chair with a deep sigh. “Could he do that for you?”

A small smile appeared on the android’s face. “No. My parts are not compatible with his.”

“Man, that’s fucked up.”

The android opened his mouth to reply, but was interrupted by an android clad approaching them. Instantly Gavin’s stress skyrocketed again and the feeling of dread tormented him once more. “Gavin Reed?”

“Yeah.” He made a move to stand but the woman held up a hand to stop him.

The motion sent a jolt of fear through him. That couldn’t be good. She took a seat next to him, professional spacing between them. Her dark eyes held an emotion Gavin couldn’t place. It was bad. He knew that without her saying a word.

But he needed to know _how_ bad.

So, he blurted the first thing that came to mind, “He’s dead, isn’t he…”

The android tensed, then shook her head a fraction. “No, but he is in a very bad condition. Our Virus experts are trying everything they can to find the offending piece of code.”

“So… he is dying.”

The android, she didn’t have a name tag, continued speaking without acknowledging his question. “We decided to let you know, in case you wanted to indulge in any rituals humans do in such a situation.”

Gavin bit back whatever remark he could come up about when he noticed Connor shifting behind him. The young android was shaking, tried to hide it. Gavin really didn’t want to deal with him now, but seeing that the Android-Nurse gave no fucks about him, he nudged Connor and rummaged in his pocket.

“…Think about all the shit you pulled through. You got shot, stabbed, blown to bits, and here you are. I’ll go see him, tell you what’s going on. Okay?”

Connor only nodded and accepted the object Gavin offered to him. It was a bullet, never fired. Police issue. “…he’s doing these weird coin tricks, but with this.” The detective explained.

He sighed, about to turn to the now standing nurse, but snarled silently and looked back at Connor. For a moment there was more to say, but then the moment passed and Gavin followed the female android through the facility.

It was a short walk, two sets of double doors, another short corridor. Then being forced into microfiber fabric to keep dust away. He felt like the fucking forensics in their hazmat suits when they forced him to cover his hair as well. Adding gloves to the mix and he wanted to punch the bastard responsible for this.

Another set of doors later and he was in a room that looked and reeked so much like a hospital ICU, he wanted to turn on his heels and head back out.

Whatever he had expected it to look like, this wasn’t it. He had expected assembly arms and Cory strung up to one of them, like Elijah would do for extensive repairs.

He did not expect the android on a table, various biocomponents disconnected and tubes running in and out of his body like a water-cooled computer. All the panels in his torso were opened, wires upon wires hanging out, mixing with cables and thirium.

He didn’t want to think to much into it, but that looked absolutely horrifying. This was some Saw bullshit, something seen in horror movies or in terminator… it hit him like a punch in the gut when he finally caught up on the thought that this android there, who was dying…

That was his partner.

And they hadn’t even done much together. Why was it that Gavin never realized what he had until it was gone?

Did he like Cory in the way that he thought? Was it just a phase? Novelty? Relief that there was someone in his life again? Was he really attached to that bucket of screws?

“Good god Gavin, sit down.” A familiar voice reached him. A woman. He didn’t recognize her right away in her protective gear with the mask on her face or the magnifying glasses on her nose. She looked like a surgeon. Not like the nutcase patching androids together at the precinct.

Slowly he forced himself onto the nearest chair and watched.

“He’s weak but stable for now. He had three cascade failures in the last forty minutes. We could barely get him working again after the last one, so if it happens again, I can’t guarantee anything.”

Gavin only nodded. Cory was dying. And he was so close, and so far away. There was the distinct clacking of a keyboard, two people frantically typing things into computers that were directly connected to the android.

“Let’s hope it won’t.” another voice muttered. Gavin didn’t recognize the man it belonged to.

Three of the five people in the room were human. The two androids were jotting down data and handed Cindy tools she requested.

Gavin’s skin crawled when a frantic beeping disturbed the relative silence of the room. “Cascade failure.” Cindy stated, voice calm and collected. “Block sector 254 and access to component 163.” Her voice was level, no hint of distress.

Gavin had no idea what any of this meant, but he knew what a cascade failure was. And it was terrifying. It could bring down company servers. He didn’t want to think about what it could do to an android.

“Done.” One of the two at the computers muttered.

“Component #1996o, #2784 and #3373g failing, issue manual override.”

Gavin was lost in a sea of commands going back and forth. Nobody moved from their places, there was no running, no yelling, no frantic searching. It was all a perfectly synchronized sequence in a well-organized team.

And yet, Gavin was shaking and wanted to reach out to his partner, hold him, tell him it was okay. Cory’s skin was deactivated, head opened up and processor plugged into various other things that Gavin couldn’t follow.

His mind helpfully provided him with a memory of Jenova, and he squished it in the bud.

He wasn’t sure why they had brought him here. Was it a cruel joke of the universe to watch Cory die like this? While _humans_ tried to save him? While his brother waited for him to come back?

Fuck, Emma would be devastated. He should have called her…

“Systems stabilizing.”  Gavin heard Cindy mutter and he wanted to double over with relief.

He could see her placing a gloved hand on Cory’s shoulder as if to encourage him. “You’re doing great, hon.” She said silently to the still android as if he could hear her.

Could he? He had no time to question it when Cindy motioned for him to come over. His legs felt as if they were filled with sand, mind racing with thousands of thoughts at all seemed to meaningless.

He settled down on another chair when Cindy tipped the glasses up and stared at him. She squinted a few times as her eyes adjusted, then gave him a tired smile. “Sit with him. Last time you did that, he calmed down pretty fast.”

“Is he online?”

Cindy nodded. “Partially. He can hear us. We had to disable movement and have to manually control his biocomponents because his system can’t handle it at the moment.” She held up a hand when he wanted to protest. “I know, it’s cruel. I wish there was an easy way to put androids under without losing all response from them, but that isn’t possible just yet, so this is out best bet.”

Gavin didn’t voice what he thought. Cindy wasn’t the type to do unnecessarily cruel things. Slowly he reached out, pulled the chair closer, mindful not to disturb any cables or tubes or whatever else ha hadn’t noticed yet.

This was some serious I, Robot shit.

“…fuck when this is over, I’m booking a trip to fucking Hawaii or something.” He hissed, voice silent so Cory could hear. “Hope you like sand, tin can, cause you’re coming with me.”

“Sand gets everywhere, you know?” Cindy muttered from next to him as she continued to fuss in the android’s insides.

“Compared to this, sand really is nothing…”

The woman nodded. “That is true.” Silently she put two biocomponents back into place and removed a tube from the android’s insides. “How’s the system purge going?” she asked louder to get attention of the two humans.

“We traced the file back to the origin and removed most of it.” One of the males said.

“Two files are so far embedded into his memory core, they cannot be removed without damaging his long-term memory.”

“What do they do?”

“One of them is connected to the respiratory system, the other I haven’t figured out yet.”

“Okay, keep working on that. What can I put back in?”

The second of the men rambled on a long list of components Gavin had to reference for.

What felt like hours later Cindy closed the panels of Cory’s body, leaving only the head open. Gavin had no way of telling time, not that it mattered. He was mostly focused on keeping his thoughts from shifting to cruel outcomes of this situation.

“The second string of code is connected to his eyes. They cannot harm him permanently anymore, but they could cause temporary discomfort if triggered.”

“Okay.” Cindy muttered. “That sucks but that’s what we have to deal with.” She sounded way too calm for Gavin’s liking.

“Let’s patch this baby back up and get him rebooted.”

Gavin wondered if it was really this easy. If anything, being conscious for most of this, was going to leave traces. He didn’t look forward to dealing with the fall out of that.

Not at all.

 


	4. Chapter 4

Things were a blur, Gavin didn’t quite remember when they had put Cory back together and started rebooting his system. It felt like hours and the window behind him already showed the rising sun. Seeing his partner hooked up to machines was nothing new. He was surprised how fast he got used to this.

Things were looking okay, but the numbers, however little Gavin understood of them, told him enough to know that things weren’t back to normal yet.

Cory’s processor was active, online, but not able to process a lot of things just yet. And he couldn’t access all of his body, as Cindy had told him. That apparently stemmed from another undetected injury had had damaged spinal wiring.

And he had always thought that viruses in androids would just be easily detected and sorted out. Never that they would be silent and slow like that.

Hank had volunteered to keep an eye on Emma for the night, which he was grateful for. He didn’t want the girl seeing Cory like this. It was bad enough that she had seen the android weak and in low power mode for weeks already.

Cory was still, clad in something that looked like a more sci-fi version of hospital attire, overlay still off. Gavin found that he gave no fucks about that.

“You scared the shit out of me…” Gavin eventually muttered.

He was exhausted and even the coffee Cindy had brought wasn’t helping anymore. But he wouldn’t leave. He had promised to stay, and he was going to stay.

The door opened silently and Cindy entered, now out of protective gear, messy hair tied up, eyes tired and make up smudged. The looked as tired as Gavin felt, but her face held a small smile anyway. She looked at the numbers displayed on the small screen and placed a hand on Cory’s shoulder.

“He’ll need a little longer to get everything sorted out. This put a lot of strain on his systems.” She explained silently.

“And he’ll be fine after this?”

The hesitation in Cindy made him clench his jaw. She pulled a chair close and settled down, eyes downcast as she sighed, before she looked at him again.

“No. He won’t.”

“But- “

She held up a hand to silence him and grimaced. “We removed most of the code. But there are traces left. They are affecting his respiratory system and his eyes. We don’t know yet to what extent, and we need to test this once he’s rebooted.”

“…His eyes are already fucked…” Gavin growled.

Cory had never really complained about it, but he had mentioned that he preferred to be in well-lit environments because that didn’t set off the different vision modes that he didn’t have full control over. It was beyond Gavin why Cyberlife had designed a unit that was so sensible to outside influences that it could barely function at times.

Cory got overloaded a lot after cases, and Gavin usually finished his reports by the time Cory could function normally again.

“I know.”

“How can that even get worse?”

Cindy shrugged. “That’s what we need to find out so we can either fix or alleviate it.”

The detective nodded slowly, then sighed. He had no energy left for anything.

“Take a nap. I’ll wake you if anything changes, promise.”

The detective snarled but complied and huddled up on a small couch in a spare room close to where Cory was. It didn’t take long for him to fall asleep, body and mind exhausted.

Cindy gently nudged him awake what felt like minutes later. She was crouched in front of him and he flinched when he noticed her. There was a blanket over him that had definitely not been when he went there, and he wanted to stay in the warmth for a moment longer. The woman still looked tired and her make up still hadn’t been fixed but she had changed her shirt and was now sporting a clean looking white lab coat.

Or the thirium had evaporated. Had it been that long?

“…Is the tin can okay?”

The woman grimaced and settled down on a spare chair. She stalled for a moment, crossed one leg over the other and fumbled with a lose thread in the sleeve of her white coat.

“Okay.” She took a deep breath, shifted her posture to sit upright and looked at Gavin. “We managed to remove the virus, we could salvage vital biocomponents and ordered replacements for the damaged units.”

Gavin wondered if she started with the good things, to lessen the impact of whatever was still wrong with his partner. “But?” There had to be a but there.

“As I said, we could not remove two trace files because they would destroy his memory core if we do. My brother is already working on a solution, but we don’t know when or if we can fix this.” She continued.

Gavin opened his mouth to get her to spill the beans, but couldn’t find the right words.

 “He’ll experience malfunctions in his respiratory system,” She lowered her voice before she continued, “And possible headaches, temporary loss of sight, disorientation, imbalance, seizures.”

Gavin hadn’t realized he had clenched his fists until he pinched his own arm on accident. He was angry, but the person to be angry at had no face, no name. Nobody knew where the virus had come from.

“And?”

Cindy eyes the floor for a second as if it was the most valuable thing she had ever seen, then looked back up at him, fixed his eyes in an eerie stare.

“…We can’t get his system rebooted.”

It was like a punch to the face. Like the moment when Arthur had been shot and Gavin had seen the first shred of deviancy in an android, seconds before he died. His skin crawled at the realization. An android that couldn’t be rebooted was initially _dead_.

He willed for the ground to swallow him whole, as the hole that seemed to devour him only brought more and more dread that he didn’t want to face.

 “Are you fucking serious?!” Gavin shouted at the woman. Anger the only way he could deal with it. He needed someone to yell at, or he could break. He couldn’t break here, Not in front of this woman. He already had, be he held up the illusion of being hard and apathetic to everything. “I thought you fixed all the shit that happened!”

Cindy closed her eyes and massaged her temples. “I can’t fix this, Gavin.” Her voice was almost a whisper now. “Cory was damaged. Badly. Both because I didn’t see the issue until it was too late and because some asshole out there thought it was funny to target the most advanced android in existence, challenge its firewall _and_ get past it.”

She growled at him. “There’s a bastard with a code out there that could kill every android in existence!”

His mouth opened and closed, before he managed to ask the question that had been burning in his mind for minutes not. “…Can he be saved?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.” The ballpoint pen in her pocked seemed to interest her more than the conversation now, and Gavin realized she was just as nervous. “His processor is in standby. We can’t get it out of there. But he is still functioning.”

“…So, he’s… whatever the android term for Comatose is?”

Cindy nodded. “It’s when you turn your computer off, and it starts, but nothing is displayed.”

Gavin scoffed. “Fuck…”

The woman reached out and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Whoever made this virus could sell it to anti-android groups. I’m not a cop, but I pick up shit I hear, and someone running around with a murder weapon should be tracked down, am I right?”

Gavin stared at her for a few seconds before he shook himself out if his shocked state. Doing nothing would help no one, but he was preoccupied. His mind was going back and forth, this was big and dangerous.

But something still didn’t make sense.

“Connor is a much easier target- why Cory?” he muttered, mostly to himself. “This makes no sense.”

Cindy shrugged. “A test maybe. Get the RK900 and you can get any other android too. I think you should keep this under wraps, just in case…. You know? Pretend Cory is fine.”

Gavin growled and sent a text to Fowler, unsure if he could trust anyone else with this. Hank was probably fine, and Chris and Ben… but the others? His neck hair stood at the thought of being unable to trust his coworkers.

“Whoever did this knew how to get past the safety protocols.” Cindy explained. “Which can be any Cyberlife employee with high clearance, such as myself and Ryan, Elijah Kamski, Connor, Cory himself… and maybe the occasional hobby hacker.”

He nodded, listening, but mind somewhere else. His hands were shaking and he tried to hide it, but Cindy’s gaze told him that she had noticed.

“My team is trying to get this sorted out.” Her smile was small, but it was real. “Could be some bug, or a glitch. Those happen after malfunctions of this dimension…”

“And if it isn’t?”

She shook her head. “We cross that bridge when we get there.”

He felt detached to the whole situation. Sure, his heart was hammering against his chest and his hands were shaking, but the feelings didn’t really come through to him yet. It would take a while. A few hours, days maybe. Eventually it would crash down on him. He had let his partner down…and yet there was nothing he could have done.

A lump formed in his throat at the thought. He couldn’t just let him die!

“Go home. Get some real sleep. I’ll call you if anything changes.”

The detective shook his head.  “I’m going to the station. Get the investigation going… If Cory can’t be saved, I at least want the bastard who did this.”

The young woman nodded and stood. “I’m sorry about this… I can imagine how much this hurts.”

He swallowed the tears that threatened to spring into his eyes. “H-How’s …. your kid doing, by the way? The… the android, …fuck I forgot his name.” He ran ha hand through his hair, suddenly seeming nervous.

“Avery.” Cindy smiled. “He’s doing fine. Keeps insisting I’ll kick you in the ass for thinking about letting him die.”

He scoffed. “Really?”

“No.” She shook her head with a chuckle. “Listen,” She continued, voice serious now. “If you need someone to talk, I’m here.”

Gavin grimaced and mirrored her chuckle. “I don’t really do the talking thing, you know? I have a reputation to hold up.”

She lifted an eyebrow. “…that you’re an ass? Well, I’ve seen you cry kiddo, so that doesn’t work on me anymore.”

“Kiddo? I’m five years older than you.”

She grinned. “Not in levels of maturity.”

A laugh escaped him, and he realized she was trying to break the tension. He almost felt bad for his mood going back up. He couldn’t dwell on this. Not as long as there was still a chance to save his partner.

“Fuck you.”

She turned with a grin and a small laugh, then tossed him a pack of cigarettes. “I know you’re trying to quit, so don’t tell anyone they’re from me.”

“You smoke?”

“You know how often I had to bring back Connor and Cory from the brink of death? Messes with your nerves.”

He frowned and eyed the pack. “Because you’re attached?”

“Yep. I love these two idiots. And I have a knack for you too, so go get some sleep. I don’t wanna hear about Detective Reed driving into a ditch.”

He scoffed and sighed. “Let me see him before I go…”

“Of course.” She nodded and opened the door. “Follow me.”

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Keeping two traumatized children in the same room, might have been a bad idea.

The apartment was dark and empty when he entered it for a quick shower and a change of clothes. He fed his cat, left the kitchen light on for her and headed for the door. He had barely even registered that he was going about the usual things with barely any sleep.

He frowned and blinked at the closest clock. It was nine in the morning. Saturday. He had spent the whole Friday with Cory, most of the night too. With a growl he shook the images of his partner out of his head and left the apartment, locked the door and drove down to Hank’s place to drop off Emma’s bag.

At the door he was greeted with a gigantic ball of fur, Hank, and Connor who tried to keep the dog at bay by pulling his collar.

Emma was nowhere in sight, but that didn’t mean anything. “Good Morning, Detective.” Connor greeted him as Hank let him in with a gruff that could have been a greeting. He wasn’t sure.

The girl in question was sitting on the carpet in the living room, leaned against the couch with a drawing pad on her lap. When she noticed him she jumped to her feet, over the couch and into his arms.

“Is he okay?!”

Gavin sighed and wrapped her into a tight hug. “…They’re still working on him.”

“This is taking way longer than normal.” She stated with a deep frown.

“They found a code that wasn’t supposed to be there, and removing that takes time.”

She nodded slowly. “Did you feed the cat?!”

“Of course I fed the cat, dummy. Where do you think I picked up your stuff, huh?”

She beamed at him, then hugged him again and headed back to her drawing pad. “You need to eat something.” She muttered while she sharpened her pencil. “Hank’s breakfast is amazing. And he let me try coffee!”

“Will you shut up!” Hank laughed at her and shook his head. “It was one sip.”

Gavin smirked, feeling guilty now that he was having fun while Cory was fighting for his life. He was safe, but Cindy had not been gentle when she told him that things could go south very fast.

“Why is she telling you to eat, that should be your job.”

Gavin opened his mouth but the girl was faster. “We take care of each other. Gavin forgets to eat, I forget to do my homework.”

Gavin silently formed quotation marks with his hands and mouthed ‘forgets’ to Hank and Connor. Connor had since released the beast of a dog known to Gavin as Sumo and pet the animal between his ears for a moment.

“Just wanted to drop Emma’s things off. Gonna head back to Cory… Fowler gave me a few days off to sort this out.”

Emma looked at him, eyes determined. “Take me with you, I want to see him!”

“There isn’t much to see. He’s pretty… unresponsive.”

The girl scrunched up her face and shook her head. “Come on, he’d visit us too!”

Gavin didn’t bother to argue with her. She would get what she wanted one way or another, and literally being the richest eleven-year-old in Detroit, even if she couldn’t access it, gave her a strange edge. She knew what money could do. One of the reasons why Gavin had decided to lock her funds until she was old enough.

The girl didn’t say a word until they reached the facility, and when they entered the building, she clung to him. He wondered if she just didn’t like it or if there was another reason for it. Surely no one had ever taken her to a repair facility?

“…We went here once.” Emma muttered eventually. “My Dad got Daniel fixed because he ruined his hands.” She explained, voice hushed and trembling slightly. “But… last time it didn’t look this nice.”

“Wait, this is an improvement?” Gavin gestured to the hard-plastic chairs, the bare walls and the windowless entrance area of the building.

Emma nodded slightly. “There are nicer looking repair facilities, but they are more expensive.” She muttered. “Does the Station pay for Cory’s repairs?”

Gavin sighed. He hadn’t really spent thoughts on that. “Let’s worry about that later. Don’t androids need insurance or something… Does that still count as property damage?”

She shrugged. “That would make way more sense… they are the same as humans now. But there will always be people who don’t see them like that, right?”

He nodded, suddenly angry that a girl her age was already aware of how fucked up the world was, not just in regard of what had happened to her. “Well, for me he’s a real fucking person, and I don’t fucking care if he bleeds blue and needs to be repaired.”

She held her hand out in front of him, and deadpanned at him when he frowned. “What?”

“Ten dollars. You swore twice in that sentence.”

He snarled and dug his wallet out of his pocket while shaking his head. “What are you gonna do with all that money by the end of the year?” He handed her the bill and sighed.

A smirk ghosted over her face as she pocketed the ten dollars. “Depends on how much it will be, but it’s already over two hundred. And it’s only march.”

He snarled again, lead her past the front desk and down the corridor Cory’s room was in. “At this rate we can go on vacation.”

“Yup.”

Gavin silently opened one of the doors in the last third of the corridor, gently shoved Emma in and closed it behind them again. The girl froze into place instantly at the sight of the android. Gavin had not expected the number of machines to increase since he had left and instantly assumed something had happened again and they needed to take more measurements to prevent it.

He hadn’t even seen the woman on the other side of the bed, her head on the thin mattress, most likely asleep.

“Who is that woman?” Emma whispered at him, not moving a hair.

“Cindy.” Gavin muttered. “The Tech from the station…” he wasn’t sure what she was doing here, or why she was sleeping, but he assumed that she needed some rest. It felt strange and there was a pang of jealousy rushing through him when he noticed that she as holding Cory’s hand.

Emma finally shook herself out of her shock and headed over to the android. His overlay had returned, his hair wild and tangled. Gavin didn’t really remember when, but Cory had customized the length of his hair a while back. Maybe to be easier distinguishable from his brother, maybe a deviancy thing.

It looked kind of cute when it was styled. But now it just looked like a tangled mess.

Emma carried a spare chair over to the bed, sat it down and used it to stand on it to be able to see Cory better. She wasn’t particularly small for her age, at least compared to her classmates, but this way she could look at the android without the danger of tripping over something.

The silent commotion roused the woman at the other side, and she slowly sat up, joints popping as she stretched and yawned. “…ah crap I fell asleep.” She muttered to herself, tried to right her hair to a somewhat presentable state, then gave up on it and pulled the hair-tie out the bun out to redo it.

“Didn’t take your own advice, huh?” Gavin jabbed at her, but she did not miss the worried glance he cast at Cory.

She smirked and looked at her watch, then shrugged. “He woke up right after you left, complete state of panic, screamed your name and we had to force him back into standby because we couldn’t get through to him. I don’t know how he managed to reboot by himself, but he did.”

Gavin shivered at the thought. He should have been there. “Why didn’t you fucking call me?!” he snapped at her and both Emma and Cory flinched violently.

The girl shrank back and Cory’s eyes snapped open. Somehow, he was relieved, but that didn’t last long when the android started trashing around, obviously in distress but unable to discern anything around him.

Gavin immediately shoved Emma behind him, reaction automatic. The girl followed his direction easily and gripped his shirt.

Cindy looked almost annoyed when she initiated the standby mode and he quickly quieted down again. “That’s why.” She hissed. “This has been happening for hours now.”

“Why?”

Cindy eyed him with a glance he had never seen on her face before. It was too stern, too hard on her round face. There was something she had to tell him, and his years of training had already told him that it was something that Emma wasn’t supposed to hear.

“Our best guess is that the trace-files of the virus are causing it.”

The woman disguised her worry almost professionally when she looked at Emma. “We can’t do much for Cory at the moment.” She told her silently. “I know you’re probably not in the mood to play, but I brought my son here and he might be able to distract you a little. Wanna meet him?”

Emma’s grey eyes focused on Gavin with a deep frown. The detective shrugged. “Let’s go together.” He suggested.

Two minutes later they were in a smaller room that looked like an office with a young boy lying spread over a couch and a drawing pad in front of him. He looked up when Cindy opened the door and jumped off to fling himself at the young woman.

“Mom!” His excitement melted into a sour expression when he noticed the girl staring at him. “…Who-“

“This is Emma. She’s Gavin’s daughter. You remember Gavin?”

The boy nodded, looked up at the significantly taller man and shrank back. “…Yes. He refused to help… but then you threatened him.”

Gavin nervously scratched his head and nodded. “Yeah… sorry about that. Avery, was it? How’re you doing?”

“Fine, since I was transferred into the new body.”

“You’re an android?” Emma almost whispered and the boy spring away from her.

“Y-yes… Sorry… I… I didn’t mean to deceive-“

“No-“ Emma protested. “I-It’s okay. You don’t look like one. How old are you- No…. What age are you supposed to be? I’m eleven.”

“…Ten.” Avery replied silently. “I… Do you like drawing?” He asked then, rushed back to the couch and split the stack of paper into and held out the box of colored pencils to her. “I… I really like drawing-“

Emma nodded after an uncertain glance at Gavin and smiled.

The detective watched them sit on the couch next to each other. They were talking, laughing after just minutes of knowing each other.

It was a huge step for Emma.

Cindy silently backed out of the room and closed the door. Her confidence seemed to leave her body at once.

“So, what’s really up with Cory?”

Cindy grimaced and tugged him along into another room, also looking like an office but less homey.

“When we looked through his files, we found an erased memory file created in November. It was corrupted and unusable until a few hours ago. It was copied and recreated either by the virus or by Cory himself.”

“And that is bad why?”

Cindy closed her eyes before she settled down at the desk and started up the terminal. “It’s better I show this to you.”

Gavin lifted an eyebrow and leaned against the wall behind her when she opened a video file.

The detective saw thousands of RK900 surrounding whoever was filming it, but only the person with the camera moved. The androids were all still, staring ahead like the lifeless machines they were.

“This is Cory’s visual feed from November 12th 2038.” Cindy explained. “Were seeing through his eyes.”

That made some sense to the older male. Who else would have been there to film when the city was drowned in chaos.

Gavin swallowed the lump in his throat when Cory suddenly barreled through the lines of androids. The toppled and fell but righted themselves almost immediately and resumed their positions.

 _‘Please!’_ Cory screamed.

Gavin clenched his fists, eyes fixed on the screen. _‘Why?! Why am I the only one?!’_

A sob ripped through the audio feed, interrupted as Cindy paused the video.

“He deviated hours after it all went down. On his own, in the middle of thousands of androids that were programmed to search and destroy deviants.” Cindy muttered and resumed the video.

Cory was backed into the wall in seconds, surrounded by a dozen or so androids and stared at him with red LEDs, calling him a deviant, defective, a threat.

It was the image of a nightmare if Gavin had ever seen one. But the worst part of it was that it was reality. And they attacked Cory.

It only lasted for two minutes or so. Gavin finally saw, for every first time how an error log looked like in the eyes of an android. And when the shutdown timer had reached just a few minutes black shoes entered Cory’s field of vision.

‘Please….’ Gavin heard the android croak, voice tinny and horribly disrupted. ‘Erase my memory…. Please… _I don’t want to die._ ’

Gavin’s heart was racing. The RK900s had turned against him either because they were ordered to or because they had deviated themselves, but the way they had attacked him was disturbing in many ways.

“I assume whoever found him did him the favor of deleting his memories. But, that memory file was never fully removed and now it’s back. He’s probably caught in a loop of it.”

“So… when he boots up, he thinks he’s being attacked?”

Cindy nodded. “I think so. We can’t get through to him. I tried to connect to him, tried to talk to him, touch him. It all failed.”

“...But you can do something?”

Cindy shrugged. “I don’t know. We’re trying to think of a solution but-“

The young woman was interrupted by a scream and Gavin watched her face lose all color. She shot up from her chair and darted into the hallway, almost too fast for Gavin to follow. The ripped the door open where they had left the children.

Gavin immediately noticed a thick trail of what looked like red paint leading to the couch and a few droplets of human blood leading up to Emma’s bloody nose. The pang of concern of his daughter dissipated quickly when Cindy tried to calm the frantic struggling of the young androids in her arms. The paint like substance came from him. Red Thirium.

“Avery!” she said, voice loud and firm. “You’re okay. Breathe, honey. Mommy’s here.”

Emma focused on the android, even when Gavin crouched down in front of her and pulled a pack of tissues from his pocket. “What happened?” he asked silently.

“…I…” the girl swallowed hard, hands gripping a yellow pencil in her hand. It was stained bright red. “…H-he asked for the yellow and I … I was too fast and I … I got his hand and… he punched me and …”

Cindy looked over to them, her son bundled in her arms, rocking him slightly as he gripped her shirt and tried to hide his sobs. Her own face was stained with tears, but she quickly wiped them away.

“Not your fault.” She said quietly to Emma and ran a hand protectively over Avery’s back.

The girl was biting her lip, tears filling her eyes she let go of the pencil and got up to shaking feet. Slowly she made her way over to the boy, crouched down a safe distance away. “…What…” her voice failed and Gavin grimaced.

Maybe it hadn’t been a good idea to leave two traumatized children alone in the same room.

“You were attacked and almost killed by an android.” Gavin muttered silently. “He was attacked by humans. He almost died too. I saw him right after it happened…”

“I’m sorry.” Emma whispered, shaking hand reaching out to Avery who looked at her with wide eyes. “I …I…”

The boy slowly untangled himself from his mother and sat up properly. He was shaking violently, face pale and stained with tears.  While they looked at each other without a word Cindy took the offered pack of tissues from Gavin and covered the bleeding wound on Avery’s hand.

“I need to get back to Cory.” Cindy muttered as she got up, still holding Avery close.

Gavin found that he looked pretty small like that. Emma slipped her hand into his and they walked back to the room Cory was in, but when the door opened for Cindy, the android was gone.

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whew its been forever. Sorry for that. I rewrote this chapter... 6...7 times?  
> I am still not happy but everyone is waiting.
> 
> Put down your forks, here it is :D
> 
> Enjoy, and comment. Comments are mind fuel :D

It wasn’t hard to follow the thirium stains after two corridors. They were just small droplets on the floor, and they could have been from any other android. But the direction they had come from and how small they were, Gavin found it highly likely for them to belong to Cory.

There had been a lot of stuff plugged into him, the detective would have been surprised if the Android had not sustained any sort of minor injury form the rather wild take off.

He sped up his steps, noticed a blue handprint on one of the doors and barged into the room.

There was significantly more thirium now. The room was empty, safe for shelves and boxes stacked on one side.

A storage room.

“Cory?” Gavin asked into the half dark of them room. There was only a tiny window, and as he fumbled for a light switch the door was about to fall shut on him.

He wedged his foot into the door, realized that the door couldn’t be opened from the inside without a key. He took note of the safety hazard and took off the shoe trapped in the door, to keep it open.

“I know you’re in here.” Gavin sighed and wandered through the room, scanned the room.

In the far end there was a red ring, blinking frantically and an android slumped in the corner, his shirt was ripped, some buttons gone.

Gavin trailed the thirium stains back to the android, noticed that most of it came from his torso, right in the middle of it, where the regulator sat.

He snarled and stomped over to his partner, who didn’t look like he had taken any note of him.

“Hey-“ As he touched Cory’s shoulder, the android flinched violently and backed even further into the corner, hit a shelf with a sound that made Gavin cringe.

“Chill, it’s just me, what happened? Why’d you run away?”

Gavin was crouching now, worry and anger spreading through him. Cory glanced at him, eyes wide, somewhat spooked looking.

“Did someone do this to you?” Gavin could barely keep the edge away from his voice. He would bash the asshole’s head in when he found them.

“There is an error in the system…”

“Yeah I can see that. Your eyes are all funky.” In the dim light, the android’s eyes almost glowed. Gavin could see the interface mirroring in them, the red warnings popping up and quickly closing down.

“This… was necessary to reboot properly…” Cory gestured to the bloody ring on his torso and the faint red glow coming from it.

“Shit. Why is it red?”

A faint smirk tugged at the android’s lips. “Twist it to the left…”

The cold shiver racing down Gavin’s back did nothing to calm his racing heart. He really needed to read the damn manual. Slowly he reached out, touched the ring and realized it wasn’t settled in correctly. With a colorful curse he looked at Cory who was eying him as if he expected that human to explode at any second.

“It’s lopsided. I gotta take it out again…”

“Affirmative.”

“At least try to sound concerned!” Gavin yelled at the android. “That’s me holding your life in my hands, for fucks sake!”

“The RK900 can function for 146 seconds after the removal of the Thirium Pump Regulator.”

The detective shook his head with a snarl. “That doesn’t make me feel any better about this.”

“Do it.”

“Fine! But if you shut down, I’m gonna beat your fucking ass.”

Cory only nodded, let his hands fall to his sides in a display of complete trust. Gavin wasn’t sure how he liked that. Why would anyone trust him like that?

“Okay, I’m doing it.” The human hissed and twisted the biocomponent to the right to loosen it.

It didn’t immediately disengage from the socket and Gavin growled. His hands were shaking, slipped off the slick surface and he almost fell over from his crouch with the force, when he lost balance.

He caught himself, took a deep breath and gripped the regulator again. This time he held it in his hands so fast, he almost dropped it.

 “Shit, shit, shit!”

Cory’s eyes rolled back for a second, before the stared back at him. It was enough to spook even the most hardboiled people out there, but he shook his head and inserted the biocomponent back into the slot. He made sure it was angled correctly before he pushed and twisted it back into the right position.

It took two seconds for the circuitry to start functioning again and Gavin could hear their inner workings restarting with small noises.

“And now we go back to Cindy, you fucking idiot. Why the fuck did you run away?!”

Gavin stood, but Cory gripped his hoodie and pulled him back down.

“What?”

“…You’ve seen it. The footage from the tower…”

Gavin scoffed. “Damn right I saw that. What the fuck was with these assholes?!”

Cory’s gaze sank to the floor. He let go of Gavin’s shirt to take his hand back, but Gavin grabbed it and scooted close to the android.

“You weren’t supposed to see it.”

“Can’t really change that now.” The human shrugged. “Why’d you never tell me?”

The silence was almost deafening. Cory seemed to look for an answer, and Gavin couldn’t bring himself to say anything. He should have been glad that he found the android, that he was up and about, and yet he had that terrible nagging feeling that this was just temporary.

“…An android does not remember being reset.”

Gavin lifted an eyebrow and shook his head. “Yeah, no. Lying won’t get you anywhere.”

“A deviant, however, can under certain circumstances recall the lost memories…”

Gavin froze. Now that explained a lot. Not everything he wanted to know, but enough to put some pieces together. It certainly explained how Cory remembered those events. It did not tell him why Cory ran away.

Cory slowly pushed himself off the ground and rose to his full height after taking his time to find his balance. Whatever was wrong with his system, was obviously still wrong. Gavin resisted the urge to help him and instead just offered his hand for Cory to take if he wanted to. There was a brief second of surprise on the androids face before he reached out and grasped the hand of his partner. It wasn’t a need for physical support, more a reassuring touch to calm his stress levels.

“I have no fucking clue how to get back to Cindy. You?”

“Yes.”

The detective nodded, let Cory set the pace back to the technician, even when it was almost agonizing to walk this slow. People looked at them funny and Gavin glared at every single one of them until he had enough and stopped the android. He unzipped his hoodie and shoved it at Cory.

“Put that on.”

Instead of protesting, Cory wordlessly took the garment and shrugged into it, zipped up the jacket to hide the thirium stains.

When they returned to Cindy, the technician was hovering over a tablet, typing away on it. She looked up when the door opened and sagged with relief.

“Where’d you go, hm?” she asked, her voice silent and calm.

Cory fumbled with the zipper to get the jacket off of him and handed it back to Gavin before he replied, “…The sudden memory surge made me believe I was back _there_.”

Cindy nodded and eyed the thirium stains on his shirt, but didn’t mention them. “Makes sense. In the mood to have me poke and prod at you again to see how you were able to reboot despite every data telling me you shouldn’t have been able to?”

Cory grimaced but sat down on the examination table and waited.

“I’d also like to know why you removed the TPR.”

“A glitch… in the system. The removal did correct it.”

Cindy shook her head with a deep sigh. “Please don’t ever do that again, there’s so many things that could go wrong.”

The android nodded, turned his gaze back to the floor when Cindy hooked him up to cables again. She rested a hand on his shoulder and smiled weakly at him.

“I’ll try to make it less _painful_ , alright?”

“He feels pain?” Gavin threw in immediately.

“Not in a human sense.” Cory answered before Cindy had a chance. “…However the pressure and the accompanying errors make it hard to stay focused.”

That made at least some sort of sense to the detective, but He was still more confused than he would have liked.

So, he leaned in the doorway and crossed his arms, heart racing for some reason.

“Seems like your system was jolted by a shock and that threw the glitch back into it’s normal parameters.” Cindy muttered to the android. “You were disoriented and scared, and made a run for it. Then the glitch returned and you forced it away with the removal of the TPR.”

Cory nodded.

Cindy mirrored the motion and grabbed her phone. “This is a software thing, I’ll ask the team to look at this and come up with a solution, okay?”

“Yes.”

Gavin could tell Cory didn’t like this any more than he did, but the android was trying to stay calm and collected.

And Cindy was about to tear it all to shreds. He just knew it

“I don’t want to do this, but we might not find a solution to this, Cory. We couldn’t remove the trace files, we might not find the cause of this either. My team and I will do all we can to solve this, but it’s best if you’ll stay here until we know for sure what happened there, okay?”

Gavin was about to protest. If they didn’t have an immediate solution why the hell would they have to stay there then? But Cory only nodded and buried his hands in the sleeves of the small hoodie. Gavin wasn’t one for sappy romantic gestures, and yet he couldn’t just stand there and watch his partner fall apart right before his eyes.

Cory would stick with him too. Why was he so scared of doing the same? It was unfounded, there had never been a situation in his life that would have explained this strange fear, and yet it was there.

But Cory needed him. Even when he didn’t voice that.

It took several more minutes until Gavin finally dared to walk over to his partner.

Without a word he sat down next to him, wrapped an arm around his back. The other to his head, mindful of the cable slotted into the LED and pulled him to his chest.

He didn’t hear anything, but he felt the tears drip into his shirt and roll down his neck. It was strange that androids could cry without a single sound. There was no snot, no sobs, to puffy faces. He had seen Cory cry in panic, but never like this.

Silently he kissed his partners hair and held him tight, unsure about what else to do.

His eyes burned when Cindy put a blanket over their shoulders. It was patterned with fish and stars, obviously a child’s blanket, but it was soft and he pulled it close around Cory, even if it was just to show him that he cared.

Fuck, what was he going to do if this didn’t get solved?

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> art made by me, find it in full on my twitter @hyper_key

**Author's Note:**

> Reviews and comments are loved and appreciated~  
> Tell me what you liked and what you think I can improve!


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